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CHAPTER IV
THE SENSE ORGANS AND THE SENSES
The soul gets embodied through the accumulation of karma. Then starts the wheel of saṁsāra. The embodied soul comes into contact with the objects of the world and tries to grasp the nature of things through the specialized sources of the body. They are the sense organs.
The Jaina thinkers, like other ancient philosophers of India, recognized two varieties of comprehension-sensory and extra-sensory. Sensory comprehension is conditioned by the senses and the mind, whereas extra-sensory comprehension occurs directly in the pure consciousness. Sensory comprehension is possible through the sense organs. The sense organs are very often considered as windows through which the soul cognizes the external world. In Ganadharavāda we get a description of the process of cognition as coming out through the senses, as Devadatta looks through the five windows of his palace. 1 Pañcāstikāyasāra describes the function of the sense in a similar way. The sense organs are denoted by the word indriya, and indriya refers to the instrumental nature of the source of knowledge. There are two ways in which the word indriya can be looked at. Indriya is referred to as the capacity of experience: it is paramaišvarya upabhoga samartha. It is also referred to as that through which experience is possible: idyate iti indriyam. 2 The Jaina philosophers called such cognition paroksa jñāna (indirect knowledge), because it comes through the sense organs, which are different from the soul. Later, it began to be called samvyavahāra pratyakşa. 3 The Jainas considered that the indriyas are impediments to the attainment of pure consciousness and also to the purification of the soul. Indriyas are the source through which karma can flow in, and the source of empirical cognition. In the Upanisads, the nature and function of the sense organs have been described. The Ātman was first alone. He knew. He was self-conscious. Then he became embodied. The sense organs became instruments through which experience is possible. Regarding the number of sense organs, Prajāpati is said to have described sixteen parts of the body. In the Praśna Upanisad the parts are enumerated. The indriyas are considered as one. The Svetāśvatara Upanişad also gives such a classification. The distinction between the sense organs, jnanendriyas,
1 Ganadharavāda: Discussion with the Third Ganadhara Vāyubhūti. Also refer to Sūtra
kytānga, 33. (Commentary). 2 Abhidhānarājendra, Vol. II, p. 548. 3 Višegāvašyakabhāsya, 95. 4 Prasna Upanişads as quoted by Deussen in Philosophy of the Upanişads, p. 268,
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